Hugo

That is a context of power, August. In dealing with the relationship between state and citizenry, one must always be looking at the context of power, because even if you're not interested, someone else will be. That is the dynamic. Ignore it at your peril. No, but things have not actually changed that much, when you think about it. In fact, things have drastically improved since the times of the founding fathers. Labour laws are far better, advertisers cannot lie anymore, we have the 40-hour-week, massive increase in real income and standard of living, etc. Capitalism produces progress. Things will be even better for our grandchildren, as long as the democratic socialist trend is arrested, and it will be, if not by others then by itself. This is where the power of government is supposed to be used as a tool of the citizenry, with institutions such as the Better Business Bureau, consumer ombudsmen, and the law itself, of course. However, the government has seriously overstepped it's bounds when it starts awarding subsidies and preferential treatment to certain corporations (particularly those it has ties to), when it confiscates profits without justification, when it imposes scientifically invalid environmental protocols that harm industry, when it taxes businesses to death and drives them away, and more - all of which we have seen in recent times.

Who mentioned anything about China?

You haven't got it straight. Allow me: Large organisations are not a problem. Large monolithic organisations and monopolies are a problem. You have actually answered your own question. Let me show you: There's your answer. Where genuine competition for power exists, power does not concentrate. This is why the founding fathers of democratic capitalism modeled their social and political systems on the capitalist system. It produces a fluid power structure, where no one person or group can hold absolute power, and no one person or group can hold power for very long. This is a safeguard against tyranny. When any one group expands, you have a problem. This can be from the social segment (Papal dictatorships, Inquisition, and so forth), from the economic segment (exploitation by the Hudson Bay Company, and so forth) or the state segment (very numerous examples, including the Nazis and Communists). Corporations and churches do have public accountability. They have a more direct accountability than politics. Instead of waiting for the next election, if your church upsets you, you can stop attending right now. If a company does something you don't like, you can stop buying their products today. Churches and corporations depend upon public goodwill for survival. Excessive government interference in social-cultural and economic segments of our civilisation is causing problems. These interferences need to be curtailed. Removing self-appointed government roles from purely cultural institutions such as marriage is one such curtailment.

The problem is that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts abolutely. As government expands, and comes to have jurisdiction over more and more facets of the nation, so they will become more corrupt. The only way to "overhaul" government to lessen corruption is to downsize it, and that includes booting it out of our social, religious and cultural lives. You cannot have a big and incorrupt government. It defies the nature of bureaucracies and of humans, and this is what is wrong with statism, as with most left-wing theories: it exists in defiance of reality and of all empirical evidence. In English, a question mark (?) transforms a sentence from a statement into a question. Therefore, according to the grammatical rules of English, I was not stating that you thought that, but I was asking you if you thought that.

The following hard facts make me think that. WWII was an economic war, a war of attrition, in which the victors won simply by virtue of training more men and building more equipment. If you want to compare relative war potential (a measure of industrial capacity as pertains to the ability to wage war), the share of world power in 1937 goes thus: Italy: 2.5% Japan: 3.5% France: 4.2% UK: 10.2% USSR: 14% Germany: 14.4% USA: 41.7% -- Comparitive Strength of the World Powers, in Toynbee, World in March 1939, p.446 Remember also that by 1937, the USA had great economic headroom - many unemployed and closed factories. Other nations, however, were at the ends of their economic tethers, as showcased by the falling living standards in Germany, Japan, and the USSR at that time caused by artificially accelerated industrialisation and armament production. In summary, not only could the USA have won WWII alone, the USA could have won a war against the Axis powers and the USSR put together, even if Britain and France had stayed out of the conflict. This is laughably untrue. Poland, the Baltic States, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and more were all capitalist states before 1939. The USSR annexed them after the war, installed puppet governments and imposed communism upon them by military force. Note that the USA did not do the same. Liberating troops soon left France, Belgium, Holland, Italy and other countries, and allowed them to pursue their own economic and political futures independently (and those nations have frequently elected anti-American and anti-capitalist governments, to prove it). American troops remained in West Germany, not to impose their power, but instead to oppose a Warsaw Pact attack, which old Soviet records show was continuously planned for and contemplated many times since 1945. Actually, one Latin American country. There was going to be a coup anyway, and the CIA had groups queueing up to overthrow Allende because his reforms had polarised the country, enraged Chilean citizens and foreign investors, and brought economic chaos. Allende had already brought Chile to the brink of civil war.

Yes, and I have proposed a way to achieve that without statism and greater government power. What is wrong with that? Apparently not, given all the people who have a problem with it. Haven't you been reading the news? Nice dodge (again). Do you want to answer that question now? Or is your answer that governments are corrupt and self-serving in foreign policy but saintlike in domestic policy? Because that's not what you said here. Either way, there are some massive holes in your arguments that you should address.

Do you think that the USSR or the UK could have even stopped Hitler, let alone defeated him, without US aid? The Cold War. Since the USSR had a policy of invading and annexing anything it could to spread Communism, it's fairly safe to assume that without the USA it would have eventually annexed Canada somehow, and as I said, the USSR was, historically, the most evil and despotic of regimes the world has ever seen. Yeah, you know, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Kim Jong Il, Pol Pot, Ho Ci Minh, they're really all America's fault. They were all just nice guys who'd love to trade with Canada and respect human rights, until the evil USA turned them all against us.

Communist governments murdered 110,000,000 of their own citizens in the 20th Century, so in answer to your question, I would say "far, far better." I'd rather be poor than wondering if the secret police were going to knock on my door and take me out to the forests or the killing fields. The 110m does not include the millions more who were tortured, forcibly deported, bound into slave labour and so forth. Actually, by those terms the USA is far surpassed by the USSR, Nazi Germany, or Imperial Japan, all of whom were sworn enemies of the USA, and all of whom America spent blood, money and materiel fighting, in order that people like you can be free to whine about the country that has saved your liberty.

Right back at you. Since you can't cite a publication, your source can't be considered valid. "The FBI" is not sufficient when I have already quoted the FBI from a specific report that directly contradicts what you allege but cannot prove that they said. Furthermore, even if what you were saying were true, you still have not even started to explain how those "facts" might support your theory, and you have not eliminated other phenomena that can affect crime rates. Coming from a student who pays next to nothing in taxes, that's charming. Who gave you the right to decide that the hard-earned money of others should be taken away? When you actually work, pay taxes and see about 50% of all your money (for the average Canadian) being taken by the government to fund things that you don't benefit from and don't believe in, you'll feel differently. You mean Bob Rae. Harris just tried to clean up the enormous mess that Rae left behind, and was lambasted for failing to wave his magic wand and turn back time to before Rae was elected. Don't forget the man who put the USSR to death, which was the most aggressive, warlike and evil regime the world has ever seen, with the blood of 41 million innocents on its hands and countless more doomed to slave labour, exile, deportation, torture and so forth. But I'm sure you think the USSR "isn't so bad", as another leftist on this board opined, which perfectly illustrates leftist stupidities and ignorance of history. You believe it's the Tories' fault that the Liberal government takes so much money away from Toronto and returns so little? You really have a problem with identifying root causes, don't you? So you say. I support capitalism because it is by far the best system for raising the standard of living for all and for wealth creation, for all. Mixed and socialist economies are the systems that keep people impoverished. Your facts are uncited. You have actually admitted that you have offered opinions on phenomena you have not investigated in any way, that you have based your opinions upon pure speculation and not fact, you have failed to cite sources, you have displayed gross ignorance for historical fact, failure to analyze root causes and more. If you don't have time to review statistics and do your research, kindly refrain from ignorantly offering opinions on the subjects you cannot research. I'm not about to lecture anybody on quantum mechanics, but here you sit, telling us all how things really are when you have no grasp of even the most basic facts.

I've got a great way to redistribute wealth. I'll go to the houses of people richer than I and steal their cars, TVs, DVD players and so on. Of course, that's basically what "wealth redistribution" amounts to: stealing. Taking from those who earnt, and giving to those who didn't. Punishing success, rewarding failure. Call it what you will. It does not work. Eventually you will run out of people to steal from, and then how will the system be sustained? Slave labour, as in the USSR and China? Wonderful.

During the Reagan and Bush Administrations, the nation's overall crime rate fell by one percent (Crime in the United States, Federal Bureau of Investigations, 1991). Where do your statistics come from? Do you factor into that the amount of tax money that each British Columbian pays (including those who don't drive) that goes towards subsidising the premiums? I have very little respect for the UN and the WHO, given their track record for recognising problems and correctly reporting them. If the UN is so good at recognising quality of life, why did it not recognise that Kosovans were being murdered in their thousands under their noses for 8 years? Homicide capital of the US. Toronto has three times as many murders per 1000 people as Chicago (one of America's most violent cities) and eight times as many as New York City. America does not do well in murder statistics but if you factor in all violent crime and property crime (theft and burglary), the US is streets ahead of Canada and Europe. Given how badly researched your "facts" are, I'm not surprised. If you'd try reading a little, you might learn the truth about all of these things.

Both, and the best way to safeguard it is to take it out of the political arena. Gay marriage would not be a problem if it was not such a hot ticket right now. About 3% of Canadians are gay, and of those, let's say 10% want to marry right now (it's probably a lot less). So, do we really feel that the actions of 0.3% of the population are going to have a massive impact on our society as a whole? I don't, and if we comply by the terms laid out above I would not oppose gay marriages. However, when the issues of this 0.3% are massively inflated so that they hit the headlines every day; while politicans and judges are busy rewriting and striking down laws left and right to satisfy that 0.3%, this is going to be a problem. In a democracy, a tiny minority shouldn't get to dictate terms to the rest of the country. You, Blackdog, spend many, many posts telling us how the US government is so full of cronyism and corruption, and then you expect us to believe that government involvement is a good, nay, vital thing? Given the track record of the Canadian government and all the corruption and cronyism that has gone on, why would government involvement work any better here? I'm sure you'll dodge this question, but I would like you to tell us all which of your two mutually contradictory opinions you actually hold.

I just don't see how. Marriage has become a political issue, but it did not start that way. Marriage is about as political as senate reform is cultural, and the institution of marriage has nothing to do with the duties and obligations of the state. As August said, as long as it conformed with the Criminal Code, fine. In this way, we aren't going to see adulterous Muslim wives stoned or Hindu wives thrown on funeral pyres because it is a breach of criminal law. As long as we are within the boundaries of criminal law, what place does the state have meddling in social and cultural customs? I would prefer to call it democratization of marriage. Basically, what we would be doing is taking a cultural institution away from the state that had hijacked it and returning it to the people. To arrest encroaching Canadian statism.

Oh, Pellaken, stop talking nonsense. There will not be a populist uprising, especially not in Canada. The government just stole $100m from the people and the polls still say they'll win the next election! Can you see this nation of sheep actually rising up for anything? As for the rest of the world, why would there be a populist uprising? People have a lot more to lose from an uprising than they could possibly gain. Right now most people have good jobs, cable TV, broadband internet, a new car every few years, and freedom in so very many aspects of their lives, and life is good. What would they throw that away for, descent into Marxist hell? Oh, and the people need a leader like they need a hole in the head - and the two usually come together. Concentration of power is a very bad thing. Very, very few leaders are like Churchill (and only because there are limits on their power, not because of personality), most are like Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot.

Why? Explain yourself. This isn't self-evident. That is incorrect. Libertarianism has been responsible for incredibly huge increases in standard of living and wealth since its inception, at a rate of change that vastly outstrips any system before it. The trickle down effect is not BS, it is fact. You are far better off than your grandparents, who were far better off than their grandparents. Due to the inefficiency and lack of incentive for improvement in state-run services it is only logical that private employment and health insurance would cost less than the taxes that currently pay for them. For example, I pay around $75 per month for electricity, to a company that was up until very recently state-run and still has a monopoly in the region because of that (it's about what I paid to the state-run power company too). My mother, in the UK, pays about $20 per month for electricity because where she lives, there are several competing private electricity companies that drive prices down for the consumer. Competition produces lower prices and better service. State-run services have no competition, so the consumer pays more and gets worse. Take a look at the Soviet car industry. In 1985 a car cost about 12 years average salary and was an absolutely worthless hunk of junk. In the US, however, the average price of a new car was about 2 years average salary and was a far superior vehicle. Would you pay 12 years salary for this? Look at it - the doors don't even fit right! Please go and read the thread entitled "Which one true God" where I have already answered this question for you. That's the popular perception. The reason you don't have facts to back that up is because you don't know. If you'd researched this properly, you'd know that pretty much all Northern and Western European countries have more people below the poverty line, higher crime rates and lower mean/real incomes than the USA. Yes, and they spent $100bn in 1999 alone fighting AIDS, and the cause of that is already known! Drugs are an affliction and a scourge of our society. Legalisation is state approval, and I don't think that's a good idea. Perhaps a good approach would be similar to the issue of software piracy, to prosecute dealers and not users, but we cannot just pretend the problem does not exist. If we legalise murder and robbery the crime rate will drop enormously overnight - does that mean we no longer have a problem?

No, because it has no place doing so. Marriage is not a legal matter, it is a social matter. Maybe you see marriage as political, but I don't, I see it as cultural. I don't think it's a good idea for the state to be involved in cultural and religious matters anymore than I think it is a good idea for churches to be involved in politics. If you agree with the concept of a big state and believe that government will always do the right thing, I would remind you that secular government has been the biggest murderer and rights abuser of all time (religious wars, persecutions and hatreds are utterly insignificant beside it) and that 176,000,000 people have been murdered this century by some government with too much power - and that's a fairly conservative estimate. To my mind, if there isn't a clear need for government to be in something, it shouldn't be in it. State involvement in family and cultural institutions has a very bad track record, for instance, the Marxist ideals of denial of women's sexual freedom, decriminalisation of rape and abolition of parenting and family. Whatever recourse is allowed to you under the cultural institution that you were married by and, of course, existing property law. There isn't really a need for divorce law as it exists currently.

I believe I made that clear, BD. Read the last paragraph again.

I have recently been doing some thinking on the marriage issue, and so allow me to present my own Harebrained Scheme™ on this issue. As I see it, the problem with marriage is state involvement. Marriage is actually a social/religious institution, not a political one, and in my view the state has no role to play in marriage. However, this has not been the case. The state has produced it's own marriages (civil unions and common-law marriage) and demanded that social-religious marriages comply with their own marriage laws. My proposal is to end state involvement in marriage. The state will not produce laws regarding marriages, the state will not conduct marriages or allow its officers to do so, and the state will not produce competing institutions such as common-law marriage. What will this mean? Basically, marriage will be returned to its original status as a social institution. People can be married in the ceremony of their choosing by the authority of their choosing. Catholics can be married as they always have, but now their marriage is exclusively before God and Church and not before State. Homosexuals who wish to marry can do so, all they need to do is find a permissive church, some other cultural institution or whatever other authority they want and perform the ceremony. Everybody can be happy with this, even Mormons and Muslims who want multiple wives and so forth. Marriage is equitable and no type of marriage is judged to be better or worse than another, save subjectively, which is unavoidable and the substance of a free society and public discourse. Laws affecting tax status and so forth should be struck down. Personally, I feel that the state should not see "married, single, divorced, widowed" for tax purposes, it should just see "citizen" and making marriage a difference is discriminatory. Therefore, it should not make any difference to the state in any way whether or not one is married. Regarding inheritance, one should be able to name one's heir as one has always done and this should be respected by everyone. Just name your new spouse as heir and there is no problem. Regarding title (Miss/Mrs), the marrying institution can convey this title change legally, as social-religious institutions confer titles such as "Cardinal", "Dean" or "Archbishop" that are universally respected. Regarding divorce, I feel that the present situation of the involvement of divorce lawyers whose primary motive is to spread animosity to line their own pockets is unsatisfactory anyway. Divorces can be mediated by a professional mediator or a cultural/religious leader, such as a priest, imam or whomever. In the event that one party feels that they have been unfairly dealt with they may bring suit and have the matter settled much as corporate liquidations are settled: a matter of mutually held possessions now to be divvied up. Common-law marriage should also be struck down. If two people wish to commit to each other in such a way, they can. If they do not, there is a reason for that, so creating an institution whereupon they are forcibly considered "married" after a year is not fair. Once again, the issue of mutually owned property can be settled without state involvement. Regarding benefits given to children, simply award those benefits in trust to the caregiver or caregivers. In the case of more than one, divide them. It makes no difference if a married couple with children receives one child-tax-credit cheque for $1000 or two for $500. For those who don't agree with gay marriage, I will say this: Firstly, without state involvement the issue is much downplayed. If it becomes an entirely cultural issue, the actions of perhaps 0.5% of the population are not going to have much of an impact on anything. What homosexuals are campaigning for right now is state recognition. If we decide that it is not a state matter for anyone, that is an end to the problem. I do believe that homosexuality is a disorder (no comments, please, other threads on that are open), but so is alcoholism, and one does not outlaw the sale of liquor to alcoholics. I think this solution would be just. It would be far more in keeping with our ideals of separation of church and state, and the pluralist system of polity/economy/society without encroachment or large involvement of one field in others, thus being contributory to the liberty and prosperity of all, a limit on state power and a blow struck for the idea that government should not be able to dictate social values to the people. Your comments welcomed.

Welfare itself is unjust and should be scrapped. There is no reason why some people should have a right to freeload off others. If you are applying this to the unemployed, disabled or others claiming benefits, what you are basically saying is the jobless or disabled are not entitled to make their own financial decisions - highly unjust and discriminatory. Actually, the most successful of all programmes are the religious (faith-based) ones. What does that tell you? I wouldn't be looking to western europe for any miracles. Most European countries have higher crime rates than the USA, more people below the poverty line and lower standards of living. They may be treating their addicts better, but they are damaging their whole society in the process. Great idea. Heaven knows, we have absolutely no problems with smoking or alcohol abuse in our society, so a few dozen far more destructive drugs thrown into the mix won't do any harm, and nor will government endorsement of those drugs! We should be looking to get rid of organised crime by putting the criminals in jail, not by stealing their business. It's kind of like saying you are going to defeat terrorism by bombing all your own buildings first before they get a chance to.

When you concentrate power people die. The more concentrated power is, the more a regime will murder. The greatest massacres and human rights violations have all been committed by totalitarian states, who have also started the biggest wars. This is an iron law of human history and is inescapable. When you realise this, you come to realise the value of democracy, pluralism and dispersion of power. It saves lives. It would take a long time to answer that question. I wouldn't label myself a socialist without knowing what it is, especially when socialists have been responsible for the murder of 110,000,000 people in this century. Could but never will. Men are not angels. This is one of the key flaws in socialism, along with: a) denial of the existence of free will and a view of human beings as unthinking, robotic economic agents consequent view of history, social evolution and all human affairs as exclusively economic in nature c) the idea that any flaw in a system means that that system must be destroyed, not repaired d) the endorsement of violence and murder as instruments of state power (more Marxist, but socialism is derived from Marx) "Social equality is a fact" is a meaningless statement. It's a fact that there's a pen on my desk too. Equality cannot be found, it must be created and the basic tenet of socialism is to impose unjust economic equality through force and coersion while denying social, political or legal equality to anyone. That's why the destruction of freedom is necessary to impose socialism. The override of natural laws and tendencies organic to man requires massive control, certainly not of the kind that would permit any kind of freedom in thought or action.

All of the above. You can't lump "artists" into one group and define their common motivation anymore than you could lump "women" into one group and define their common motivation.

Wow! Bush and his staff have connections to business! Who would have thought it? By that rationale, shouldn't WWII have stopped at the German border? Do you think we should have done that - pushed the Wehrmacht back to Germany and then struck a peace accord with Hitler? You're answering evidence and fact with feelings and sentiments. That doesn't work in the real world, so I agree, until you can actually ground your arguments in facts there isn't much point to this debate. All you've done so far is spout irrational and self-contradictory anti-American nonsense without a shred of evidence to back yourself up. You won't answer my questions and when forced to concede a point you just drop it altogether, probably hoping I won't notice.

Right. It's interests are the preservation of its own democracy and that of its preferred allies. The USA has saved its own freedom and also the freedom of Britain, Canada, France, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Holland, West Germany, Austria, Japan, South Korea, and so on and so forth. No. Hindsight is always 20/20. The CIA knew that they had a Marxist in Chile, and knew that Marxism tends to spread because of "missionary" work and the Marxist passion for terrorism, violence, and military conquest and subsequent annexation. They also knew that Allende was going to be a butcher, Marxist leaders always are without exception. By the time they acted, Allende had already plunged Chile into economic chaos and was drawing closer to Cuba and the USSR, so they took action, picked the guy most likely to be able to get rid of Allende and backed him. Unfortunately, that guy was not much better in the human rights department, but at least the spread of Marxist cancer was arrested there. In summary, it wasn't a mistake to get rid of Allende. It was a mistake to replace Allende with Pinochet. I don't think the CIA was itching to see 3,000 Chileans murdered, so I think it's fair to call this a mistake. Alright, you have any actual evidence of this, or are you just buying Benjamin Barber's line of crap wholesale? Rubbish. Politics has far more influence over the economy than vice versa. Corporations can't bribe politicians, all they can do is back the ones who support them, and if you can't find a politician who agrees with you, you're out of luck! That's why tobacco advertising hasn't resurfaced: no matter how rich and powerful the tobacco companies get they can't make any political headway without political backing, and they can't buy that. Oh, and you remember how Congress confiscated $100bn from the oil companies in 1980? Remember how the DoJ went after Bill Gates like a rabid dog? Remember how Bethlehem Steel was virtually driven out of business by environmental concerns? What about John Connally, who had more corporate backing than any politician in history which only got him one delegate from all the primaries he entered? Money drives politics, my foot. You don't have a clue.

That's a contradiction in terms. The bigger and more dominant a thing becomes the more inefficient it becomes. Efficiency is increased when power has a broad base and individuals make more decisions. That's why free market economies invariably pull far ahead of planned economies. Furthermore, you forgot the iron law of human history: power kills. Nor do I, but socialism is a theory full of holes based on flawed thinking, that never works in practice. It's as wrong as "2+2=5" and I think that the fact that it cannot be defended in debate reflects that. On many subjective issues there are two sides to an argument that will never be won because a good defence can be mounted in favour of each viewpoint. The fallacy of socialism is not a matter of opinion but of fact and therefore the theory is indefensible.

Sometimes, not always. Unlike their enemies in the USSR, the PRC, the Taliban and so on, they were not consistently egregious, nor egregious to anything like the same degree as I shall demonstrate. I think what sticks in your craw is that you owe your freedom and probably your very existence to the USA, and you can't stand this because you hate them for some reason. Without America gunning for your rights overseas, you might have been added to the list of 150 million people murdered by the enemies of America this century. Do you know what 150 million corpses look like? If you laid them head to toe in a line it would stretch for 150,000 miles. That's 5 times around the equator. Do you seriously expect me to believe that the USA is the equal of these regimes in evil intent and action? And I'm sure you're about to trot out stories of massacres America has committed and her allies have committed and so forth. Regarding the first, fine, when you can show me the mass graves of forty million American citizens massacred for no good reason I'll concede. Regarding the second, we are looking at picking a lesser evil and also, America is not responsible for the conduct of people she allies with, ultimately. America is believed to have been indirectly responsible for about 2,000 political murders (e.g. lynching of blacks) since 1900. In the 20th Century, America was responsible for the deaths of around 583,000 people, virtually all of whom were foreigners killed in war. Nazi Germany murdered 21 million people, many of whom were their own citizens. The Soviet Union murdered perhaps 41 million, Communist China 35 million, and so on. Obviously, the idea that America is one of the most violent nations is absolutely stupid. It's not even close. Even in the few years since it's inception and 1987 little Communist Vietnam managed to murder almost three times as many civilians as the USA has done this entire century. That's 1,669,000 people murdered by the North Vietnamese. If you want to know how many the Americans killed in that conflict, it's about 6,000. 6,000 people is very tragic, but it's nothing compared to 1.6m! Oh, and good old Mr. Allende. Allende was a Marxist, and if there's one rule about Marxists it's that when they get power they invariably start slaughtering people and trampling freedoms. It's as inevitable as night following day. So, when a Marxist got into power in Chile I'm sure the CIA did panic and try to get rid of him by any means possible. I would have. They're jumpy enough about Castro, and with good reason. Castro has put tens of thousands of his own people to death, based Soviet nuclear missiles in his territory and continues to be a sworn enemy of the USA. The last thing we need is more Marxists in South America. Make that anywhere. Right, so like I said, a fluid and ever-changing power balance that assures continued liberty. Corporations cannot ever be considered a united body. The media co-operate about as much as Fox and the New York Times. Lobby groups are as varied as you can get - pro-life, pro-choice, conservative religious, gay-rights, etc. What you have described here is not a conspiracy to seize power but a pack of dogs all pulling in different directions. Unlikely that any one of them could come close to power. This is why America remains free - thank you for making my point!